This week, the Government’s Health and Social Care Committee released a highly critical report which said that healthcare staff were burnt out and overstretched due to a shortage of staff.
Remedium are on a mission to solve the UK healthcare staffing crisis, and so we welcome all attempts to address the clinical workforce shortages that are currently plaguing our NHS. We fully support and agree with the key themes put forward in this report, having championed this issue for many years.
Jeremy Hunt, chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee, said on the Today programme that the NHS staff shortage was “the single biggest problem” contributing to low levels of staff wellbeing. As the leading voice on the clinical workforce shortages facing our NHS, Remedium wholly support this statement.
An increase in the number of medical staff in the workforce is clearly paramount to addressing these issues; it would relieve the excessive work burden and pressures placed on existing employees and would therefore go some way in decreasing their burnout and consequent departure from the NHS.
However, in order to address ever-growing clinical staffing shortages, NHS trusts will have to recruit more permanent clinicians from overseas in order to plug the nationwide gap, especially if numbers of medical school, foundation programme (FP) and specialty training places are not rapidly increased to meet predicted future doctor supply requirements.
The NHS staff shortage was “the single biggest problem” contributing to low levels of staff wellbeing
– Jeremy Hunt, Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee
The healthcare staffing crisis: How we can help
Having championed this issue for many years, we are experts in NHS workforce consulting and NHS workforce planning. Even before the pandemic, there were 12,000 doctor vacancies across the NHS, and this report has highlighted the negative impact that COVID-19 has had on the mental health of healthcare staff. We talk to doctors on the front line on a daily basis, and so we know many are feeling exhausted, burnt-out and are at risk of leaving the profession early.
It is for this reason that we recently launched our ground-breaking initiative – Healing our Healers. Healing Our Healers is an initiative with one goal; to bring awareness, attention and action to the mental illness plight of the doctors fighting this pandemic. We will be bringing the mental health of doctors to the forefront of the discussion and creating resources for those doctors on the frontline.
That being said, despite our best efforts, we know that until the staffing issue is addressed, we will only ever be able to do so much to support doctors’ wellbeing.
Our experienced team are already consulting NHS trusts across the country to improve their clinical recruitment processes, which is helping to relieve the burden on their existing teams; contributing to better staff wellbeing, retention and to more efficient, patient-centred care. However, in the long-term, systemic workforce issues that are contributing the NHS-wide healthcare staffing crisis must be addressed on a national policy level, or else the problem will only continue to manifest.
We are on a mission to solve the UK healthcare staffing crisis and we work with CEOs and COOs across the NHS, as well as Government and media, in order to address the chronic staff shortages that are plaguing our NHS. Contact us today if you are interested in learning more about how Remedium can support NHS Trusts around the country to address nationwide clinical staffing shortages, while improving wellbeing and retention among all medical staff and driving more efficient, patient-led care.